It’s been well over forty years since I wrote you a letter, but I don’t want you to think I’m an anti-Santite. It’s just that I’ve been busy.

You see me when I’m sleeping. You know when I’m awake. You know if I’ve been bad or good. To be frank, I can’t tell the difference between you and a stalker.

But if you can hand-deliver toys to all the world’s children in a single night with only a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer—one with a severe case of rosacea and whom I suspect may be an alcoholic—you are definitely more efficient than UPS or FedEx. I’m hoping that you might be able to squeeze in a miracle or two on my behalf. Since I never seem to get what I want for Christmas anyway, I figure I’d go straight back to the source.

You’re from the North Pole, right? At least here in the Northern Hemisphere—you know, the part of the world where people, uh, develop written languages and invent stuff—the days before Christmas are the darkest ones of the year. Even in daytime the cloudy skies are lit Suicide Grey, and whenever the temperature dips below 40, I’m screaming like a nun who’s seen a church mouse.

In short, this time of year puts a crimp in my normally bubbly, gregarious, and effervescent personality. But I’m not seeking any toys. I’ve compiled a wish list of things that would lighten my winter doldrums.

I wish that what I see with my very eyes was all an illusion.

I wish I was wrong about a lot of things. Too many things.

I wish I lived in a world where I could ask honest questions without being called anything besides “a person who asks honest questions.”

I wish I could find one honest person who disagrees with me and can stay on topic.

I wish that brainwashed people didn’t reserve a special hatred for those who aren’t.

“I wish that people would stop getting so offended and reclaim their sense of humor.”

I wish I lived in a world where people can examine my written statements for truth and falsehood rather than constantly searching for my motives, especially when they almost always get my motives wrong.

I wish that people would stop getting so offended and reclaim their sense of humor. If they never had a sense of humor in the first place, I wish that modern medicine would develop a way to inject them with it. If they refuse to accept the injection, I wish there was a way that jokes made at their expense would actually kill them.

I wish that it became possible for people to actually gag to death on their own smugness.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Bill Maher get accidentally shot by a rifleman on safari who mistook him for an aardvark.

I wouldn’t mind if Quentin Tarantino was beaten to a pulp by an angry black mob while he pleads in vain that he’s on their side and they derisively chant, ‘This ain’t no movie, BITCH!”

If Rahm Emanuel were to choke to death on a bagel tonight, he still wouldn’t get a Christmas card from me.

If Ed Schultz were to die from a hemorrhoid explosion, I still wouldn’t watch his TV show.

I wish you could convince me that people everywhere aren’t getting as dumb as toadstools.

I wish that the world’s mean IQ was three standard percentiles higher.

I wish that schools would focus on educating rather than indoctrinating.

I wish we had an educational system where kids are taught math and logic rather than emotions and hysteria.

I wish that government schools were good at teaching kids something beyond the false notion that government is good.